valkyriafandomcom-20200222-history
Marmota
The Imperial land-dreadnought Marmota was Maximilian's ultimate weapon, designed to both recover and act as a mobile platform for the mighty Valkof. Information Built to Maximilian's specifications in a joint effort with the Imperial navy, this vehicle blurs the line between tank and battleship in a new class called the "terrestrial dreadnought." Four engines and two propellers work in parallel to power this behemoth, allegedly developed as a mobile platform for the Valkof. An experimental artificial Valkyria apparatus is said to have been installed at the rear of its main deck. Trivia *It's not entirely clear what kind of vehicle the Marmota actually is; Eleanor Varrot describes it as a "battleship on legs" in the briefing for "The Maiden's Shield" but Marmota has no visible structures that resemble legs. Neither does it have visible treads; it seems most likely it's a hovercraft, especially given the use of propellers to drive it. During "Marmota's End" what appear to be tread impressions are visible in front of the Marmota, but on other occasions it does not leave such marks. Early concept drawings of the Marmota do show multiple treads underneath the end closest to the Valkof's mount; it's impossible to tell if these are present in game, since Marmota's underside and lower body is always obscured by dust clouds or rubble. *The structure resembling a bow is actually the stern and the Marmota spends half the scenes it appears in driving backwards. *While plans have been made for larger vehicles, the Marmota is around 2,000 tons heavier than the largest land vehicle ever built, a quarry excavator called Bagger 293. The gun mounting seems to be based on the two large pylons either side of the excavator's bucket wheel; more obviously, though, Marmota resembles a hybrid of a pre-Dreadnought ironclad warship and a large commercial hovercraft. The giant spinal gun mirrors a plan by Nazi Germany to mount the massive 80cm Schwerer Gustav ("Dora") railway gun on a land-based chassis, itself an upscaled version of a plan to mount a Krupp K5 railway gun on a pair of converted King Tiger hulls. *HG Wells' story The Land Ironclads is often said to have anticipated the deployment of the first tanks. Wells' landships were a quarter of the length of the Marmota, but the vehicle itself was actually fairly typical of the way tank design was imagined to be heading in the early days; Armoured vehicles, the size of sea-faring warships, were often thought of as the future of land warfare. Since the Valkyria Chronicles world does not appear to have any military fixed-wing aircraft, such a vehicle could conceivably have ended up being built. *''Marmota'' is a genus of large terrestrial squirrels, the Groundhog being the most well-known member. Coupled with the Batomys, this may be used to conclude that Imperial designers may have a sense of humor in naming massive machines after small creatures, similar to Nazi Germany having a prototype superheavy tank named "Maus" (Mouse), and planned tank so large it would use a battleship turret named "Ratte" (Rat). *The 37mm gatlings aboard Marmota are possibly the most pitiful weapon in game, struggling to do much damage to anything but snipers and engineers. This seems odd as they are the largest calibre rapid-fire weapons seen in game. Gallery MarmotaGlos.jpg MarmotaWithValkof.jpg|The Marmota with the Valkof mounted VC_Marmota's_Shell_of_Light.png|A shell of light protects the Valkof. Category:Vehicles Category:Tanks Category:Bosses Category:Imperial Army